Our youngest son is bullying our older son and my husband is egging it on. Please help.

[anonymoused1]

I'm a mother of 3 children, 2 boys and a girl aged 11, 13 and 18. Our youngest son (the 11 year old) has been taking Brazilian Jiu Jitsu classes for 5 years and my husband is overly passionate about his progress, to the point where he gets a scolding if he doesn't feel like going to a class.

The other day, our daughter ran into our room in an obvious panic telling us that our 18 year old son had been knocked out and wasn't moving. What happened was, our daughter was recording a fight between our youngest and eldest children. Our youngest got him in a move where the legs are wrapped around the neck and our eldest didn't "submit" and got knocked out. He was unconscious for a while and had urinated himself much to the other's amusement later on.

My eldest son is an introverted, sweet kid who has been put more into his shell from this incident. He insisted he was fine but later when I looked at our youngest son's YouTube channel, there was a video where our youngest son was doing the same move as before on him except his legs were around his waist this time. Our eldest was "submitting" but our youngest son was refusing to let go until he repeated a vulgar statement into the camera, which he eventually did while in tears. When I saw this, I remembered when he came out of the shower earlier and had bruised ribs.

I showed my husband the video and I proposed various punishments including showing his Jiu Jitsu instructor the video. Instead, he insisted on speaking to our eldest son and teaching him how to "toughen up" and I quote "stop acting like a fagg0t". When we spoke to our youngest son, my husband sounded proud and acted like I was exaggerating.

At the dinner table yesterday, our youngest son reached over to grab some bread and my eldest son noticeably flinched. It broke my heart, I don't know what to do.

What the fuck. Your husband is an abusive shit and you need to leave and get your children away from him.

I might not quite have put it as eloquently as breaded above, but I too was gobsmacked at your husband's reaction. That's appalling and I'm not sure there's anything you can do while he's the person you have to parent with! I share your heartbreak for your eldest DS.

The problem is your DH. (Sorry.) Your DH has serious issues around physical aggression and he is turning your younger son into a bully. Home should be a safe place where everyone treats each other with respect, and it's the parents' place to ensure that. Your DH is failing terribly as a father.

So as things stand, all your children need to be protected. Your older DS needs to be protected from both his father's attitude and his brother's physical attacks. Your younger DS needs to be protected from turning into a bully, and also by the sound of it he is being bullied into doing so much ju-jitsu and is taking it out on his older brother. If possible speak to the instructor yourself, both about the fact that DS2 is being pressured to learn ju-jitsu and also the use he is making of it. Your DS2 is making YouTube videos of his own bullying which is disturbed behaviour in itself. And finally your DD needs to be protected, because she is being raised in a family where physical bullying is seen as normal male behaviour and this will make her vulnerable to abusive relationships later in life.

If your DH doesn't understand how serious this and how much his atttude needs to change for his childrens' sake is then your question really belongs on Relationships. Sorry.

Thanks for the responses.

I just told my DH (tell me if I'm using these abbreviations correctly. Dense Husband?) about our oldest DS's bruised ribs. He spoke to them when they were in the same room (the ribs looked worse than how I remembered it). Our oldest DS said that he fell in the shower and that's how he got it which he clearly lied about because his brother was in the same room.

My DH seemed convinced that this was the truth because of the age and weight difference. Our younger DS is 60lb and our oldest DS is 130lb. He said that his legs at 60lb wouldn't be muscular enough to leave a bruise as big as that from squeezing his waist. Which clearly must be gaslighting because in the video, my oldest DS is crying from the pain and begging him to stop. Not to mention, his legs were strong enough to knock him out before.

But my DH is convinced our oldest DS was exaggerating the whole thing. This isn't something he would do, he had scoliosis surgery and he never complained and he downplayed his pain. From the video, he looked to be in agony though. His face was blue and it took him many attempts to repeat back what our younger DS said due to the lack of air.

It just seems typical that my DH would turn this into a strength thing, I swear he has the mentality of an ape. I'm going to take the advice and try to take my kids to live with me and my mother's. And then possibly therapy for my youngest DS.

Just to add that my youngest DS enjoys Jiu Jitsu despite the pressure to take it. Also, his instructor is a good role model and would be angered by this.

I'm very glad you are taking steps to deal with this You might want to consider some therapy for yourself as well, your DH sounds a lot worse than dense and if you've been living with this for a long time you might need some support.

DH usually stands for "dear" husband but sometimes it can stand for other things

I don't think it'll be necessary, I just wish I could have some support from my best friend's Jack and Daniels. But I'll be alright, I made my peace with moving out a while back. Timing has been the issue.

Like, dick head? :)

Sounds like you know what you need to do to protect your children and I'm sorry you're going through this. As other PP have said, your husband is the issue and your sons have a terrible role model. I hope your youngest hasn't learnt too much from his father.
Explaining all this to his jujitsu teacher is actually a good idea as I think DS2 needs to know the correct way to use the skills he has learnt.